


angelus ex machina

by aerialiste



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 10x03, All the Kinds of Sex, Anal Sex, Angelic Grace, Baking, Bunker Fluff, Bunker Sex, Castiel in the Bunker, Coda, Comfort/Angst, Demon Cure, Episode: s10e03 Soul Survivor, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Mark of Cain, Men of Letters Bunker, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rough Sex, Season/Series 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2014-10-27
Packaged: 2018-02-22 04:23:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2494310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerialiste/pseuds/aerialiste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The only feeling he really remembers is the thick pressure in his chest from rage, being furious at something that stops him, something holding him back and he doesn’t even know what but he hates it, he wants it to let him go—he throws back his head, roaring, as it speaks directly into his ear, softly but forcefully: <em>it's over, Dean, it's over—</em></p><p>He knows now those were Cas’s arms around him, secure, viselike, too powerful to escape. Always gripping him tight, even when he doesn’t want to be raised. Always coming, even when he hasn't called. Always saving him, even when he doesn’t think he deserves—</p><p>Dean likes everything about what he’s able to do to Cas. He wants to find out what else. He blinks, and then blurts out:</p><p>“Cas, I’d rather have you, dude or not.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [betts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betts/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It’s the Mark, Dean.” He can feel Cas studying him, trying to gauge his reaction. “You still have the Mark.” When Dean gulps down the sickness and looks up, Cas’s face is impossibly close. Dean doesn’t even need to pull back the bathrobe sleeve to look. He can feel it there—not throbbing, not like it was before, but tight, pulling—itching a little, even, like a new scar, or stitches.
> 
> He can also feel Cas’s breath, the cool pull of it, across his own upper lip.
> 
> “Okay then,” he tries to say solidly, with his usual ready-for-whatever resolve; but all that comes out is sort of a weird cracked whisper. He swallows and Cas’s eyes drop, tracing down the line of Dean’s throat, and there’s an odd beat he can’t interpret. _I’m so tired,_ he thinks desperately. _I’m just so fucking tired._

After a few fitful hours of something like sleep, Dean opens his own eyes, slowly.

Not slowly enough. They water and he scrubs at them roughly. Too bright, even with only the dim desklamp.

Without knowing how, he can tell it’s dark outside. On the floor by the bed there’s a white plastic bag filled with convenience-store snacks: Doritos, a two-liter bottle of Coke with mini set-ups of Jack, a fried cherry pie, salted nuts, some jerky. Sam must have left it there. But Dean feels zero interest in eating, or drinking, or for that matter leaving the room, or maybe his bed, anytime soon.

He slides backward to lean against the headboard, swallows the thick saliva that has collected in his mouth and shakes his head to clear it. He’d fallen asleep with his boots on, and now he kicks them one at a time onto the floor, wondering when he’d last taken them off.

His eyes burn. He thinks: _I should try to remember_. He thinks: _oh god fuck that._

But he also knows he has to try, at least a little, to shift his mind backward, to pull together some kind of story. That or be ambushed later—by nightmares, working with his hands and letting his mind wander, when someone asks a question he doesn’t know how to answer.

If he can’t collect what he remembers and make some kind of narrative out of it now, flashes of memory (he knows this) will lunge from below the surface later and pull him under.

Dean _knows_ what happened. He remembers enough. He’d seen them, faces frozen with indecision, both Cas and Sam clutching weapons as the flung water dripped down his cheeks and off the point of his chin. He knew right away he’d been a demon. He knew he’d died.

But the details aren't there. He studies the backs of his hands, his knuckles: at one point he knows they’d been bloodied and scabbed. The skin now perfectly whole. He flexes them, feeling only the usual stiffness, no pain.

_Wood splintering, easily. Rough flaking handle of a hammer. Laughing and swinging its heavy ballpeen head casually, like a pendulum._

Outside his room the bunker is totally silent. Dean rolls over and stares at the floor, then deliberately closes his sore eyes, exhales, and tries again.

_Sam’s face, pale with shock, sweating. His arm in a black cast._

Was the cast because of him? He starts there, bracing himself mentally. Circles warily around; gets close but can’t quite enter into the same frame of being he must have occupied for weeks. Can't get back inside that existence, from which everything looked subtly charred and darkened around the edges, limned with ash. A slimy film coated his tongue like soap or fuel. Suddenly he can feel it again—it fills his mouth, nauseatingly.

He remembers drinking, drinking all the time, and that it had almost no effect. That it never took away the sooty flatness. That he endured a endless grating sensation crawling across what used to be his skin, subcutaneously irritated by everyone, all their limitations, their banality, their finicky insistence on behaviors that no longer interested him—even Crowley, especially Crowley. That he had to bear this continually, while—

_Playing pool in a bar, studying the muscled backs of men bent over, an unfamiliar thick heaviness in his jeans—_

He shifts, tried to stay with it a minute longer. Jagged flashes, surges of rage, a distant sense of perversity or perhaps just isolation. Simultaneously miserable and powerful—

_Reaching into the drawer, past the knives and the saws, to choose gleefully the claw hammer—_

While Dean dozed, earlier, he’d heard Cas quietly lifting the torn-apart door off its hinges and carrying its shattered pieces out to the woodshed in back, while Sam slept off his hangover and Dean pretended to be unconscious, wished he were.

 _Where is Cas now? Didn't he leave with Hannah? Was that who was waiting in his car? Why didn't he just say it was her?_ Dean looks up at the ceiling and exhales.

If he's honest with himself, the only thing he really remembers, the last thing before coming to with holy water splattered across his cheekbones and fresh salt water welling up instinctively in his raw eyes, is the feeling of something that stops him, something holds him back and he doesn’t even know what but he hates it, he wants it to let him go—it speaks directly into his ear, softly but forcefully: _it's over, Dean, it's over—_

All he knew was that something wouldn’t let him plant the hammer claw deep into Sam’s skull, and it infuriated him, he growled in confusion, and then when he whipped around far enough, caught scent of what it was, he threw back his head and roared, because he knew he could not get away from it—

Screaming like a pinned animal, like the enraged predator he had become. _The natural order,_ he had assured Sam confidently. What he was always supposed to be: a brainwashed killer finally taken to his logical, inevitable conclusion.

_Incisors throbbing with the ache to clench down into the meat of its throat and rip, he could not even turn to bite at its neck, the rich perfume of it overpowering and maddening—_

Eventually it had taken his breath away, left him slumped over its arms gasping, the scorch of its chest pressing against his back, sear of its grace burning into him along his entire length, wherever their bodies touched. Everything muted and smoky through those eyes: greenish walls, unshaded lights overhead. Binding him irrevocably, he could not break out of its hold and there was no point in trying—

_A flurry or rustle of movement raced under his skin, through his nerve bundles and muscle fibers and capillaries, bubbling hot and bitterly cold at the same time and strangely exciting, always, being that close to an angel’s vessel, even in his baffled fury he could feel it penetrating into him, through his own staleness he could taste the clean bite of oxygen—_

He knows now those were Cas’s arms around him—secure, viselike, far too powerful even for a Knight of Hell to wrench free from their encircling clasp. Always gripping him tight even when he doesn’t want to be raised. Always coming to him even when he doesn't call. Always saving him even when he doesn’t think he deserves—

He shudders and sits up, rips all the shirts from his body in one movement, squints around the room for the gray bathrobe.

Half-aware that he’s now trying _not_ to remember, _not_ to think about, not figure out exactly what it was he _wanted_ in that moment, what he still wants now, what he'd felt with Cas’s arms wrapped around him so securely, so steadfast. Something about the blue tang flooding his mouth, cutting through that drugged steroidal anger—

Dean pulls the bathrobe from the back of a chair and shrugs it on, shuffling out of pants and socks at the same time. He feels shaky, rattled, almost frightened; he would not admit this at gunpoint, but his ribs feel sore, with a deep hooked-in sadness he doesn’t have any right to feel. Almost as though someone had died, Kevin again, or Jo, or—

He sits abruptly at the foot of the bed, legs gone nerveless. “No,” he says aloud; it comes out as a croak. No, not—not that too—oh shit. Benny. He'd had a plan, he remembers now; he’d made a plan, he was going to go back into Purgatory after him, with the First Blade, he and Crowley had argued about it, fought bitterly, Crowley had said he was still too—

There’s a soft knock; he freezes. “Dean,” and it’s Cas’s voice, low, and even more muted by the door, as though he doesn’t want to wake him if he’s still sleeping.

Dean loops the belt of the bathrobe around his waist and knots it securely, oddly relieved that it’s not Sam. He hopes Sam sleeps around the clock. He had looked thin, almost as ill as after the trials, and anyway Dean feels no eagerness to face his brother after yet another round of betrayal and lies.

He clears his throat to answer, but instead stands up and opens the door himself.

Already headed away, Cas turns back to look at him, head canted to one side assessingly. "I knew you might still be asleep, but I wanted to," he says, then falters and stops. Dean can still feel that invisible ineffable _something_ rippling off him, simultaneously bracing and gentled. It seems more magnified than usual, though he can no longer smell it.

He leans against the doorframe and tries to look normal. But doesn’t remember what that is supposed to look like. “Hey," he starts, then stops again. Then: "Cas, I don't know how to—I think I’m like you were,” he blurts, before he even knows what's going to come out.

But Cas is never thrown by non sequiturs. Instead he steps in closer, moving into the light from the bedroom, arms relaxed at his sides. His coat and jacket are off and his white shirtsleeves have been rolled up, exposing tanned forearms and wrists. If it weren’t for the fact that he’s vaguely energetically shimmering, Dean might think he were still human, still fallen. His face tilted to look up searchingly into Dean’s.

“You aren’t quite sure how to be a person,” he clarifies, and Dean doesn’t pull his eyes away, because yes.

Cas looks down at his shoes, brow furrowed. “As you saw, I myself found it…challenging. But it became easier when I had help.” His voice is still very quiet, like he’s trying to be nonconfrontational, or maybe soothing, as if not to alarm Dean. _Cats and dogs,_ Dean thinks, and almost smiles. _We were each other’s instinctive enemies._

(He tries not to think about what packs of dogs do to feral cats, when they catch them. _It’s good,_ he thinks grimly, _that Cas didn’t find me. That Sam found me first. Especially if his grace wasn’t up to—_ )

“Yeah, well,” he rasps, rubbing the back of his neck, “Since I totally flaked out on you during _that_ whole shitshow, I think you’ve helped out plenty for one day—let’s call it even.” He tries to laugh at his own sarcasm, but somehow can’t. “And Sammy’s cashed out. So all by myself, like a big boy, I’m going to go relearn what the hell shampoo’s for, and soap and water, and towels, and then maybe I’ll move on to food.” At the very word, his intestines twist. He keeps his face neutral, though, setting off down the hallway toward the bathrooms.

Halfway there, a thought strikes him. He turns around, expecting Cas to be gone, but he’s still standing by the door, shoulders upright and broad, not curved over with anxiety as Dean had grown used to seeing them.

“Wait—why are you even still here, man? I thought you and, uh, Hannah, I thought you had angel war to wage, now that—“

He stops because Cas puts up a hand. His face has closed off and his tone is short. “I sent Hannah to deal with rounding up any stray angels and organizing their return to heaven. I am not needed for that and there are more important matters here.” His eyes flash as only Cas’s eyes can, even in the dim hallway. “Dean, it’s not over yet. With you.”

Another ripple of nausea rolls through Dean and he leans against the wall, bare feet clammy on the floor. Instantly Cas is next to him, pressing a hand to his shoulder. Dean tries to reel away from the touch but can’t move.

“It’s the Mark, Dean.” He can feel Cas studying him, trying to gauge his reaction. “You still have the Mark.” When Dean gulps down the sickness and looks up, Castiel’s face is impossibly close. Dean doesn’t even need to pull back the bathrobe sleeve to look. He can feel it there—not throbbing, not like it was before, but tight, pulling—itching a little, even, like a new scar, or stitches.

He can also feel Cas’s breath, the cool pull of it, across his own upper lip.

“Okay then,” he tries to say solidly, with his usual ready-for-whatever resolve; but all that comes out is sort of a weird cracked whisper. He swallows and Cas’s eyes drop, tracing down the line of Dean’s throat, and there’s an odd beat he can’t interpret. _I’m so tired,_ he thinks desperately. _I’m just so fucking tired._

“There are...possible solutions. I’ve been doing research. But you're not going to—" Cas blinks, cuts himself off. "Dean, we can talk about this later. Tomorrow. When Sam's awake.” He gestures down the other end of the corridor, toward the kitchen. “In the meantime I made dinner, if you want food.”

Thus the rolled-up sleeves. Dean tries to picture an angel defrosting or sautéing or knowing which parts to eat and which you're supposed to throw away, and comes up blank, which his expression apparently shows.

“Nora taught me,” Cas explains. “Also I learned from other people I met. I _know_ how to cook, Dean. Beyond nuking taquitos,” he says, with some asperity. But an almost imperceptible smile crinkles around his eyes.

Dean laughs at this, finally, tiredly, rubbing a hand across his stubble. “Cas, buddy, whatever you come up with has to be better than a cold fried pie from the goddamn Gas ’n’ Sip. Look, I don’t even know if I can keep anything down but—just give me fifteen, okay?”

Cas turns, and for some reason Dean watches him walk down the hallway. Across the back of one thigh, his suit’s dark fabric has a wide smudge of what looks like flour. Dean shakes his head, staring. _Angels, man. Just when you think they’re only good for smiting demons_ —Dean drops that line of thought.

As he steps into the shower stall, he hears something, and pauses to listen. It’s _humming_. Castiel, in the kitchen, is humming, a sort of tuneless crackling aimless sound like radio static. “Martha fucking Stewart, meet Mary fucking Poppins,” he mutters, turning on the water; but his heart’s not in the joke. His heart’s not anywhere. Dean catches a glimpse of the ruined tattoo on the left side of his chest, deliberately doesn't look at it, and wonders distantly if this is going to be about the same level of grisly as coming back from hell, or from purgatory, and will it take about as long, or will it take longer, or is it maybe going to be slightly easier; or if it’s going to be a whole lot worse.

His money’s on worse.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Come outside with me.” Cas drops the dishtowel onto the counter and rolls his sleeves down, leaving the cuffs unbuttoned. “Outside the bunker,” he clarifies.
> 
> “What? No, it’s like two in the morning, man, it’s cold out there,” Dean protests, clutching his mug protectively. Even though Cas didn’t add sugar, the coffee’s not bitter, just rich and dark. He wonders if there’s also a spell on it, if it’s blessed or whatever. Or maybe decaf.
> 
> “I promise I’ll…I'll explain. What I need.” He hesitates. “I need to show you something.”

For some reason, Dean pauses outside the kitchen to take a deep breath before going in, leaning his head on the door. An unexpected side benefit of inhaling deeply: something smells amazing. Yeasty, maybe. Like bread.

Warmth comes out of the kitchen in waves. He'd turned up the hot water in the shower as far as it would go, caught off-guard by chills, bone-deep shivers that knocked him off balance. He skipped shaving so he wouldn’t cut himself during one, and towel-dried his hair aggressively (why had he let it get so fucking long?). But the back of his neck still prickles, damp and goosefleshed.

He pushes the door open, glad of the heat.

Cas is scraping flour off the countertop with a silverware knife. An open trash can at one end of the island has caught most of it but Dean can see flour spattered on the floor and across the tops of his black dress shoes.

He looks sweaty and disheveled, shirt slightly more unbuttoned than usual, but pleased with himself.

"What, can’t use your angel blade?" Dean drags a chair over to the one window and sits next to it, sticking his socked feet up on the sill and crossing his ankles. Sam has finally broken him of the habit of putting his feet actually on the table, so this is the next best thing.

Dean tries to tip his chair back and grin the way he usually would. His face doesn’t seem to be working right.

Cas's own expression is unreadable, a look he still wears sometimes, in those increasingly rare moments when Dean thinks of him again as _Castiel_. "When I am corporeal it's more appropriate to complete tasks using physical ability rather than grace," he says in a rush, as if to get it over with, as if Dean weren't already perfectly aware of all that.

Dean’s too tired and maybe hungry to roll his eyes. "Yeah yeah, you’re an freaking moonbeam of celestial whatever, you tell us all the time. So what's all _that_ about?" He indicates the countertop with a jerk of his head, eyebrows raised.

Cas turns away without answering, pulls a tray of biscuits from the oven with one (bare) hand, and turns off the gas with the other. Dean stares as he slides them onto a dishtowel-covered plate. Those, those are—

“These are biscuits,” Cas announces.

“Yes, yes they are,” Dean mutters, astonished. Golden-topped, fragrant, perfectly risen biscuits. He abandons his chair and comes to perch on one edge of the table in order to appreciate them more closely.

Cas is rummaging around in the cupboards. “I didn’t make gravy to go with them,” he says a little sadly, emerging with a plastic tub of whipped honey Sam picked up at some hippie local farmer’s stand. “I thought that might be too much for you.”

“ _Jesus_ , Cas. Who the hell were you hanging out with, Paula Deen?”

Cas slides a biscuit in front of him on a paper napkin, ceremoniously. “I learned a great deal about American cookery from reading the sides of all the boxes at the gas station. They have nutritional information and preparation instructions printed on them.”

“All the boxes. You read them _all."_

Cas half-smiles again, the odd new smile he has, only one side of his mouth going up. “It was very slow at night. And we carried Bisquick.”

The half-smile bothers Dean, it reminds him of something but he doesn’t know what.

He also doesn’t know the last time he ate. After the Mark he’d gradually become unable to keep anything down: just whisky, sometimes coffee. And there wasn’t—he couldn’t make a distinction between—those weeks and then afterward, it all seemed to run together, the Mark and then the fight with Metatron, and then—

“Metatron?” He must have said that aloud, because Cas is frowning and leaning forward, alert, his eyes focused on Dean’s. He understands from Cas's expression that Metatron isn’t a problem anymore. _When did Cas get so much sun,_ Dean wonders stupidly; his throat, suddenly a few inches away, now darkly tanned inside the open white shirt collar. But then he stops being able to see Cas because now he feels it happening again, it’s happening all over which is so weird and fucked-up, why would it this time, it never, not before like this—anyway the other ones didn’t—

_The car crash, just incredibly loud, noisy and jolting and a lot of yelling, and then nothing. That time with Sammy, those two asshole hunters with their shotguns._

_Coming to on a sketchy doctor’s exam table with a gasp. Cas and him suddenly facing each other in the dark, surrounded by trees and ungodly shrieking. The hellhounds: trying to keep them off of him with his bare hands, losing blood, fighting to stay conscious, passing out._

But none of those, it wasn’t, this hadn’t been like this—maybe because before he’d been younger, young and strong, harder to kill, and this time—this time the blade had been cold, _it was so cold,_ he wanted to tell Cas, _it slid into me like my chest was water, like I wasn’t made of anything, like I wasn't even—_

The floor is also cold, it turns out.

“There’s flour down here,” he says pointlessly, as Cas’s strong hands roll him onto his side. He tries to sit up and the hands hold him down.

“Just wait,” Cas says, so Dean waits.

“But I'm fine, and you made biscuits,” his mouth says without him, it keeps talking but inside him is a deeply lodged spine of ice that feels like it will never melt and at that moment another chill seizes him with a vengeance, shakes him like an animal has him in its teeth. He’s wrenched into a shape that isn’t his and he can’t even be embarrassed about it, elbow and knee knocking on the floor, teeth gritted together.

Cas lunges for something and comes back with his coat, managing to wrap it around Dean while at the same time hauling him up into his arms, half across his lap. It feels good to be not on the floor. The coat’s unexpectedly warm inside, as if an extension of Cas's body itself.

“You’re trying too hard,” Cas says, but his voice is muffled. It takes Dean a second to figure out that's because Cas’s mouth is pressed against his hair.

“No,” he says automatically, but no to what? He has no idea.

Cas’s arms are all the way around him again and this time it's better, less restricting and more something solid that could hold him together, keep him from vaporizing into a dusty puff of soot like a salt-and-burn job. He sort of wants to press his face into Cas’s chest where everything seems safest but can only shudder and clench, trying to catch his breath between spasms.

By the time the chill passes, Cas has wrestled him back up into a chair and Dean is actually wearing the damn coat. The black lining is softer than Dean would have thought and it smells exactly the way he remembers from Purgatory: like burning wet leaves in the fall, like football games. All the nights they fell asleep there, him and Cas and Benny pressed back-to-back; but every time Dean woke his head would be on Cas’s shoulder, breathing in that smell.

Cas puts a biscuit into his hand and without thinking, Dean bites into it.

After a while there seem to be a lot of crumbs in front of him and not many biscuits left. There isn’t any more honey either. Dean's fingerpads shine from all the butter and without thinking he licks it off, salty and amazing.

Cas smiles and this time it reaches both sides of his mouth. “You put something in those,” Dean accuses, as Cas pours half-and-half from the carton into a mug of coffee and hands it to him. He wraps his fingers around it, inhaling the steam, warm for the first time since he heard Sam’s voice saying _welcome back._

“Using my physical ability does not exclude casting spells,” Cas says simply, which earns him an eyeroll. He shakes his head, clearly wanting to be serious. “Sam needed sleep. You needed food. I knew how to help.” He puts cutlery and plates into the sink as the faucet runs; settles the stopper, squirts in dishwashing liquid.

“Yeah? What about you, Cas? What do you need?”

He doesn’t tilt his head anymore; Dean kind of misses that. “I don’t require those.”

“I know that, buddy, but look, what about—you said—” Dean tries to think of a casual but straightforward way to ask about Hannah. Cas had called her “a female,” his mouth shaping the word almost apologetically, but Dean had still felt an unexpected twinge, like a stitch in his side. “Don’t you have to go back to heaven and lead your little angel cult? Because you know me and Sam will be fine, no problem—you need to leave we can just, we'll figure out that whole—”

“Come outside with me.” Cas drops the dishtowel onto the counter and rolls his sleeves down, leaving the cuffs unbuttoned. “Outside the bunker,” he clarifies.

“What? No, it’s like two in the morning, man, it’s cold out there,” Dean protests, clutching his mug protectively. Even though Cas didn’t add sugar, the coffee’s not bitter, just rich and dark. He wonders if there’s also a spell on it, if it’s blessed or whatever. Or maybe decaf.

“I promise I’ll…I'll explain. What I need.” He hesitates. “I need to show you something.”

“Something that’s outside.”

“Yes.”

“Not inside.”

 _There’s_ the head tilt. “Yes, Dean.”

Dean is about to give in gracelessly, with an appropriately mean comeback; but when he stands up and pulls the trenchcoat around him he automatically sticks both hands into its pockets, and one fist closes around the thing he finds there.

He looks at Cas, already opening the kitchen door.

“ _Angel_ biscuits,” is all he can come up with. “I’ve been cursed by fucking _biscuits._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You adorable kudos-leaving NERDS, I can't even, especially given the G-rated nature ( _so far_ ) of this plodding little interior monologue. To make up for that, in this chapter I've attempted to have things actually happen! With objects, and people! Moving in and around and through space and time! How could it possibly go wrong? ("One would imagine, the least best better." Thanks for that, Fergus.)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cas’s bare palm blazes against Dean’s nape, even through the grown-out hair; he burns hot enough through fabric but skin-on-skin, Dean can practically feel his hand sizzling there. He thinks of water drops skittering across the surface of a cast-iron pan.
> 
> “I have known Cain a long time. From before.” He pauses again, his face so close that in the starlight Dean can see the shadow of each separate eyelash. “From the beginning. When he sacrificed himself for his brother.”
> 
> Dean can’t help but laugh at that, huffing air sharply through his nose. _Fucking moonbeam of celestial whatever the fuck._ “Yeah, I always forget how your ass is older than dirt.”
> 
> Cas moves his hand from the back of Dean’s neck, where it’s started to feel like a sunburn, down again to his forearm. As the angel’s fingers press tentatively against the trenchcoat’s sleeve, Dean can feel the Mark embedded there, its cold dull bite like a lodged bullet, Cas’s touch making him hyperaware of its solidity.

On their way out, Dean goes down again; but this time Cas, right behind him, seems to be expecting it.

His arms fly around Dean just as he starts to double over, and once again they wind up half-sitting, half-lying on the grass just beyond the bunker steps.

 _And I was right, it’s fucking freezing,_ Dean thinks numbly. This close to the ground, he can feel the seep of dampness, it drifts along, rises off the curve of earth like an underwater current. Fog clumps in the ditches, hugs corners, floats ghostly through culverts.

Suddenly he’s in the vise of another chill; he bites down on his molars so his teeth don’t rattle together.

But a muscle-drenching heat soaks in wherever Cas touches him, sinking through layers of shirt and trenchcoat. Slowly, Dean stops shaking, and is able to open his eyes.

The Men of Letters had deliberately situated their bunker far away from any human habitation; even after all this time, it's so far away from houses and buildings that in the absence of artificial light, the stars are bright enough to read by. Sam likes to go running before sunrise; he says he can see where he’s going and at the same time brush up on Greek constellations and Arabic star names. Something about astrology's relevance when juxtaposed against the wheel of the year, and the lost Indo-European pantheon, and whatever other pointless nerd lore he houses in that massive Neanderthal cranium of his. Dean's suddenly weak with relief that the hammer never made contact with it.

He shifts a little to look up at Cas, who has one hand clenched firmly around Dean’s left forearm, where he’d somehow sensed the Mark months before. His other arm is wrapped behind Dean's shoulders, holding him up.

“My eyes aren't burning,” Dean says aloud, looking up into the night sky without discomfort.

He realizes he’s been keeping them mostly closed, inside, and now that he can see details clearly, he thinks maybe his vision has been blurry since the cure. Is it—is it because they’re green again instead of black? Like taking off sunglasses, maybe. Or when they turn the lights back on in the movie theater after you’ve grown accustomed to the dark. The stars prick out in individual detail, not just a spray of light.

He twists to see Cas better, head spinning, or maybe that’s the stars moving around.

“Cas, is grace—does it have a temperature?”

Cas is looking out across the field on the other side of the blacktop, where frost already silvers the chopped-off stalks of some crop or another. His familiar face, so serious in that muted way. _Why does he look like someone just died? I’m not dead._ Dean doesn’t understand any of this.

“That is not an important question right now.”

Dean can feel warmth radiating through his back, where he’s classlessly sprawled across Cas’s thighs. He should probably wriggle away but feels surprisingly comfortable. That this is true makes him flush with embarrassment but he trusts the dark will hide that.

“It’s just, you seem—don’t take this the wrong way, man, but you’re kinda hot. Like you’re a frigging _space_ heater right now.”

Cas doesn’t so much as twitch a half-smile. Somehow, Dean thinks, his lack of response isn’t because he doesn’t get the innuendo. When did making Cas smile become important?

It seems like a long time before he answers, his voice rougher than usual.

“No. It is not typical. The heat you feel is—it's this grace, Dean. It’s not mine.”

“Whose the hell is it?”

“Since Metatron, I’ve had to—it hardly matters. All you need to know is that it’s burning out, similar to the process of oxidation. As it leaves me, as it decays, it throws off heat. And consumes me as its fuel. Not unlike fever in a human. Eventually I become physically ill, as with a bacterial or viral infection.”

Cas must feel him suddenly struggling to sit up because together they manage to maneuver themselves upright again, Dean grabbing all over him like a drunk girl in heels as he finds his footing. They both start talking simultaneously.

“Come on, man, why didn’t you just freaking—”

“Listen to me, Dean, we have far more serious—”

Dean makes his voice gruffer and deeper instead of louder, a stupid big-brother trick he’s used to fight with Sam for years. “Cas, I know, okay? The Mark is bad news, I get it, you don't need to tell me—I'm the one who puked blood. But this grace thing—can’t Hannah do something, get Metatron talking?" Hannah, Dean thinks privately, can be pretty freaking intimidating when she wants. "Did the little creepshow use it _all_ for the spell? You guys must have a heavenly deep freezer up there, some kind of cryogenic Walt Disney storage for—”

“No, Dean. There isn’t any—no. I have another plan for that. But the Mark will start to—it will work on you more quickly."

Cas has a hand now around each of Dean’s biceps, tightly, one arm still drawn behind him like they're dancing. Dean can’t complain, since Cas is basically holding him up. "We must get the Mark out of you immediately, if I—that is, if you let—if we can.” Cas is almost stuttering, which seems weird, but then everything about this is weird.

Including the fact that Dean is wearing Cas's trenchcoat and clutching at him like Cas is about to zap them somewhere.

 _Awesome—so, after all that, we’re_ still _both about to bite it. Again_. A line from a movie comes to him, that sad gay cowboy thing Cassie had made him watch with her on their last date—the only date they’d had during that brief, wrenching few days when they were together again, before she dumped his sorry ass a second time.

He half-laughs, and says the line aloud: “Well, this is a goddamned bitch of an unsatisfactory situation.”

Senses, rather than sees, the smile. (And _why_ is making Cas smile so important?)

He doesn’t want to admit that he feels worse with every passing hour. _Presumably,_ Crowley had said, carefully, emphasizing each word, _the least best better._

Slowly, Cas starts walking, hauling Dean along beside him. He steers them gradually toward the treeline behind the bunker, an area of property Dean hasn’t ever really explored. Stars glitter, thickly scattered above the dark treetops.

The woods start abruptly with a scruffy but dense thatch of trees. Sam says on the map there’s a creek if you go far enough back, which neither of them has ever done. Mostly pin oak, elm, hackberry, a few red cedars—scraggly trees, the plain, homely kind that struggle back doggedly after zealous homesteaders have clear-cut everything. Farmers always seem to share some perverse desire to see all the ground around them exposed.

Dean kind of appreciates that urge, actually, especially after Purgatory.

The closer they come to the woods’ edge, in fact, the more he decides that’s probably why he’s never poked around in there. And he further concludes he really doesn’t have any desire to investigate tonight.

Just before the edge of the grove his feet sort of stop working.

“Cas, wait. In _there_ is what you want me to see? Can't you just—what is it?"

Cas moves around to face him, still holding his upper arms securely. He’s close enough that Dean can see his face working as he searches for words.

Everything suddenly feels very bad. Cas isn’t meeting his eyes, instead gazing unfocused somewhere around the region of his shirt collar. Neither of them move.

“While you were…gone,” Cas says, now looking somewhere over Dean’s shoulder, “I went to see Cain.”

 _This bullshit is taking forever_ , Dean thinks in sudden irritation, his hand curling again around the thing he’s found in the coat pocket. _To hell with this_ —

He chases Cas’s face around until he finally catches his eyes, and then refuses to look away. They stare at each other without blinking, and Dean goes in with both barrels.

“I know I promised to kill the dude, but that’s obviously not gonna happen. So is that the big problem? You gotta tell me, man. Is that how I have to get rid of the Mark, is take him out? Or is there a way I can work around it, live with it, whatever the fuck I have to do, because this—”

Cas cuts him off, not looking away. “Cain suspected you wouldn’t go back for him. Without the Mark, he’ll age now as he would normally, live out the rest of his lifespan, die a human death.”

Dean swallows, weaving slightly on his feet. “But you still went to talk to him about how to get rid of it.”

Seemingly without thinking, Cas transfers one hand from Dean’s arm to the back of his neck, as if bracing him for a blow. Dean flinches, but doesn’t move away.

Instantly Cas’s bare palm blazes against Dean’s nape, even through the grown-out hair; he burns hot enough through fabric but skin-on-skin, Dean can practically feel his hand sizzling there. He thinks of water drops skittering across the surface of a cast-iron pan. 

“I have known Cain a long time. From before.” He pauses again, his face so close that in the starlight Dean can see the shadow of each separate eyelash. “From the beginning. When he sacrificed himself for his brother.”

Dean can’t help but laugh at that, huffing air sharply through his nose. _Fucking moonbeam of celestial whatever the fuck._ “Yeah, I always forget how your ass is older than dirt. Alright, keep going.”

Cas moves his hand from the back of Dean’s neck, where it’s started to feel like a sunburn, down again to his forearm. As the angel’s fingers press tentatively against the trench coat’s sleeve, Dean can feel it embedded there, its cold dull bite like a lodged bullet, Cas’s touch making him hyperaware of its solidity.

“The bearer of the Mark must kill. Even though he loved her, Cain couldn’t do as Colette asked.”

Dean swallows again and nods. “Right, I get weaker unless I'm killing. Like it was before I ganked Abaddon, until I die again—”

Cas suddenly looks utterly stricken.

“Goddammit—” Dean feels a surge of something like anger, only softer, somehow more adhesive, and it comes with a not-unpleasant tugging sensation inside his stomach. He grabs Cas’s hand, still hovering carefully over the Mark. Cas makes a half-hearted attempt to pull away but Dean hangs onto his fingers, not caring if it hurts, twisting them until they're firmly caught up in Dean’s.

“None of this is news, buddy, so I don’t know what you want me to say here. There’s always some dumbass shit going down—and now you and me are in the same boat, so I'm just going to tell you the same thing I told you in Purgatory, only this time I fucking mean it: I’m _not_ leaving here without you."

 _You don't get to quit. We don't get to quit in this family,_ Sam had said, fierce, before jabbing Dean again and again with that giant evil syringe—

"So we get on top of it. Get rid of the Mark, get back your grace. We go back inside, wake up Sleeping Beauty and start researching. Hell, we even call Mrs. Tran and see if Kevin’s corporeal enough to do some recon, maybe find out a—”

“Dean, I keep telling you. We don’t need—I already know what we have to do.”

“Jesus Christ, then, spit it out!” Now they’re glaring at each other. _Almost like the good old days,_ Dean thinks: pacing the green room, just about to take a defeated chomp out of one of Zachariah's hamburgers when suddenly Cas is whirling him around and shoving him against the wall, hand clamped tight over his—

Or maybe he’s remembering that because that’s what just happened.

Without being quite sure how he got there, Dean is now flattened against the rough bark of a cedar tree. And Cas’s hand is closed over his mouth, eyes blazing pale blue-white in the darkness.

“Did you wonder why Cain keeps bees, Dean? It’s because of me. I spent so much time with him, all those thousands of years ago,” he hisses, so quietly Dean almost can’t make out the words, he's all but whispering in some inexplicable, close-to-smiting rage. Why is he so angry?

Dean can’t quite breathe but stays immobile against the tree, holding as still as possible, listening. “How do you think he met Colette? I brought her to him, Dean. I thought she might save him. I knew the sacrifice he'd made, he was the last human I had contact with before we all—how did you think he'd stayed hidden from heaven all that time, or that the demons hadn't found him before? That was all me. How else would I have recognized the Mark on you?”

Suddenly he backs off and Dean almost falls to the ground, grabbing the trunk behind him for support. Cas walks a few steps out into the clearing, where a low wisp of fog curls over the grass, now glistening with dew, and stands there with his head in his hands. Then he turns back, still in wrathful-seraph mode.

“So yes, Dean, I _can_ pull the Mark out of your flesh. Colette could have done it for Cain, if she hadn’t been _human_.” There's a sneer when he says the word, like Uriel or Raphael talking smack about mud-monkeys. “But trust me when I say: you aren’t going to like it.”

Dean stays braced against the tree and crosses his arms to regain composure.

“Then let’s get it over with. You gotta cut it out with your blade? Fine, I already _know_ what those pigstickers feel like, Metatron spitted me on one like a—” His whole field of vision blurs and bursts into light and—

 _There is only one thing he sees, only one creature in the room, only one right being in the whole wrong world: Castiel, his blue shirt opened all the way, chest slick with sweat, vulnerable, exposed, his entire body rigid, spasming against the chair, head thrown back and mouth pouring out that terrible white light as his slut of a one-night-stand runs him through with vindictive silver and even though, even though he doesn't have the Mark yet, all Dean wants, he can taste it in his mouth like copper, like salt-thirst, is to fucking_ end _her—for killing Cas or for touching him, Dean isn't sure which—_

He hears his name and blinks. Cas’s hand is over his mouth again and now he's pressing Dean into the tree, their chests touching along every point, hips flush, knees knocking, legs interleaved. Cas's weight against him feels warm and solid and right, and Dean thinks stupidly, not for the first time, _If I hadn’t kicked him to the curb he wouldn’t have slept with that chick in the first place—_

“If we do this,” Cas warns, “I have a very short time in which to recover my own grace. I will no longer be able to use that of another angel.”

Dean nods, indicating he gets it, he won’t fight or freak out or anything; but Cas still doesn’t take away his hand, he just carries on talking. Dean can feel Cas’s fingers against his lips. He always somehow thought Cas’s hands would be more delicate, but the skin is rough and calloused, the hands of a builder, a soldier. He wants to open his mouth and taste, to feel with his tongue, why does he want that, is it the Mark making him want it—

“Sam began the cure, but did not finish it. We discussed it beforehand and I told him not to, that I would complete the last step.”

The last step? Dean tries to think, bits of bark sifting down into his collar. Then he remembers: _the mouthful of blood_. He says this with his eyes.

Cas nods. “I don't have the right blood. But I can use,—use, I can use,” ( _the fuck_ , Dean thinks, befuddled, _why is it taking him a year to get this out_ )—“I can't put grace directly into you,” he manages, eyes searching Dean’s face, “it's too volatile, the Mark would ignite it. But according to Cain, I can—it can be any other—it can be anything. A, a palmful of liquid, of fluid. From this vessel. From my vessel. From a vessel inhabited by an angel.” Cas’s face is drawn tight as he chokes out the words in the last sentence, one by one, pained, as if ashamed.

“And I would have, I should have asked Hannah, I know you would prefer—prefer females,” he continues, desperately. _That word again,_ Dean thinks dazed, _like he keeps needing to remind me what kind of meatsuit she's wearing_. “But I couldn’t. I should have, Dean. But I don’t trust anyone else, not even her, and I don’t—I couldn’t. I need it to be me.”

His thumb has been resting on Dean’s cheekbone, up by his eye socket, and Cas has started rubbing it back and forth, pressing a little too hard against Dean's skin, gazing at him with a look Dean has seen on his face for years, only now turned up to eleven. Dean thinks he probably doesn’t even know he’s doing it, any of it.

Now Dean understands why Cas’s hand is over his mouth.

Now Dean understands why they’re not in the bunker.

The moment stretches out and lasts a century, and the world around them is silent. A branch creaks overhead. Dean can feel Castiel’s heart beating rapidly against his chest.

Beneath Cas’s hand, he starts smiling, lips pulling back into a grin. He can’t help it.

Cas sucks in a swift breath through his nostrils. “You’re. I thought.” He draws back slightly, but instead of moving his hand away, he drags it down Dean’s lips and over his chin, watching as if mesmerized, and settles it around the curve of Dean's neck, fingers curling into the tendons, with a wide-eyed look of alarm on his face that suggests he doesn’t know what he’s doing, or why.

His hand tightens a little more and Dean’s grin grows wider.

“You stupid sonofabitch," he breathes. "You really thought I would turn you down." Cas shudders and it's like a string is cut, his stability seems to go out from under him and he crashes forward, both arms braced on either side of Dean, half-falling against the tree. He leans his forehead against Dean’s, their noses brushing, mouths open, both panting now.

Cas's eyes have turned that irradiated blue again and his hand is firm around the base of Dean’s throat, and Dean thinks he should probably be terrified, but he’s just not.

“Whatever you have, Cas, whatever it is I need, put it in me. Do it. Now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
>  
> 
> (You're not kidding, Jack.)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cas's eyes have turned that irradiated blue again and his hand is firm around the base of Dean’s throat, and Dean thinks he should probably be terrified, but he’s just not.
> 
> “Whatever you have, Cas, whatever it is I need, put it in me. Do it. Now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter that has the sex in it.

He’s never told anyone about this, but he always thinks of that breathless pause, that suspended plangent instant just before it all gets really interesting, as the drum break before the song starts. Like Bonham’s dry pulsing snares, just before Plant’s wavery weedy harmonica kicks in.

It’s one of the hottest moments there is.

So as badly as Dean wants to get rid of the Mark, and as much as a part of him wants to tackle Cas and find out exactly how this is going to work, he’s also not wanting to rush it.

He doesn’t crowd things like this, he never has, never pushes—he’s always been oddly pliant, patient, willing to linger, stay here, hang in the pocket, pulse inside this dangling-but-not-quite-falling droplet. It doesn’t make sense, for someone who has no patience otherwise.

But Dean _knows_ Cas, knows him bone-deep, inside-out and backward, has carried his goddamned moldy coat around with him in various car trunks for an entire year; has seen him glazed with delusion, black-veined and drunk with power, giggling and shimmering with iridescent bee-wings; has argued with Sam and Bobby about him, has sassed angels and ganked demons and done even worse on his behalf; has stuck up for him in the bleakest moments sometimes only because he happened to have the same name as someone else whom Dean once knew and trusted.

And currently, given Dean’s weakened state, he _has_ to put his faith in him.

This Cas, the one leaning against him now, head bent, forehead resting on Dean’s shoulder, gulping for breath, overcome with want—this is both another new being who carries that familiar name; and also the same someone Dean’s known since he impassively slammed his way into a cow barn and made all the lightbulbs pop.

(The utterly _dismayed_ look on Bobby’s face, when they turned to each other, appalled, after that first failed shotgun volley—even after everything, sometimes he still starts laughing when he’s alone and he remembers that. Bobby never found it funny.)

Cas has changed so much, Dean thinks (sliding slightly back and away, as far away as he can move against the rough bark, all but flirting, wondering if he’ll be pursued); he hardly ever gets the acerbic eyebrow or the puzzled squint anymore—he gets that sad half-smile more often these days, or, more rarely, the full-on joyful grin, the one that shows teeth.

And sometimes, apparently, he actually gets the _teeth._

Someone’s cursing under his breath but it's not him, it's Cas. Who, it turns out, is very surgically and precisely raking his incisors down the side of Dean's neck, mouthing at the stubble, gnawing at the hinge of his jawline, and swearing a fervent blue streak into Dean's skin.

An unknown sensation ripples through him, half-painful, half-ecstatic. How did he not—how is this apparently a thing he's been aching for, for who knows how long, _did I want this before Purgatory even, when did it start,_ he wonders, until Cas drops his mouth to Dean's collarbone and without warning bites down, groaning in a language Dean doesn’t recognize, but whatever he says doesn’t sound at all decent.

“Jesus, Cas," he croaks, grabbing for shoulders and coming up with two handsful of hair; he’ll settle for hair, it’s unexpectedly silky and he wants to smell it, so he pulls it toward his face. "You kiss your mother with that mouth?"

Dean has barely dragged him back up to eye level (turns out his hair smells like pine needles and honey and something bitter, maybe turmeric or asafoetida) when Cas pulls back. He deliberately places one forearm across the top of Dean’s chest, pinning him against the tree, and the other—oh god, the other, Cas reaches down and for a heady second Dean thinks Cas will touch him, but he digs his fingers instead into Dean's hip, which turns out to be almost as good. Dean's legs at some point opened involuntarily, so Dean relinquishes the hair in order to grab Cas by the ass, which turns out to be the best idea ever because now he can rock against him. He buries his face in Cas’s neck to muffle the sounds that escape him and digs his fingers into Cas’s back pockets, feeling muscles beneath the fabric clenching and surging under his hands as Cas presses back against him, meeting his hips in involuntary rhythm.

Cas leans in until his mouth is about a half-inch away and Dean’s eyes cross, focusing on his lower lip. He tries to move forward to catch it between his own but something is holding him down.

“I don’t have a mother,” Cas rasps, “but I want to kiss _you_ with this mouth.”

“So what’s stopping you,” Dean says, with a hitch in his voice, trying not to writhe.

“I need—you need to be sure this is what you want.”

“Why, is it going to hurt?” They hadn’t exactly talked about the actual Mark-removal part.

“Probably,” admits Cas, running his tongue across his lips, his breathing harsh.

Dean tries to laugh but it might sound more like a sob. “Good. Then I definitely want it.”

“But…but, Dean. Females.”

Dean stares at him, wondering how they both missed so much. “Yeah, what about them.” He shoves his hips upward again, just to see what will happen.

What happens is Cas’s eyelids droop and he can’t get words out: “You. You always. With them.”

Dean likes everything about what he’s able to do to Cas. He wants to find out what else. He blinks, and then blurts out:

“Cas, I’d rather have you, dude or not.”

At which point the pendant tremulous poised moment of “are we really about to do this” becomes “oh it’s _on_ alright.”

Castiel is suddenly everywhere, like a swarm of angels instead of just the one. Dean just clings to whatever part of him he can and tries to keep up. Finally, _finally_ Cas’s open mouth slots down over his and they fit together hot and wetly perfect like they’ve been doing this every day for the last six years (why haven’t they), Dean pushing back into the kiss until their teeth meet and still he can't get far into enough Cas's mouth. It’s like being assaulted, it’s like drowning, it’s like Cas kissing him to within an inch of his life. It makes the seam running up the inside of the crotch of his jeans really uncomfortable.

Cas slides the back of his free hand slowly along Dean’s cheek and, when he reaches his ear, fondles it obscenely, moves briefly away from Dean’s mouth to lick into the curve of it, whispering more filthy-sounding incantations, which have an utterly devastating effect even though Dean only recognizes maybe one syllable out of ten.

He clutches at Cas for purchase, feeling woozy and unhinged and he’s pretty sure it’s not because of the Mark. This in fact might be the best he’s felt since he’d made Cain transfer the Mark onto him. He remembers having ample indiscriminate sex as a demon (especially the blond triplets, their gorgeous hips and asses and biceps and cocks—he definitely remembers them); but none of it was this, like being devoured by a libidinous cohort of heaven.

He strains against the forearm holding him down and they both shudder in pleasure when he can’t move. _Angels are strong,_ he thinks, brilliantly.

So Dean moves the only part he can move: he bucks up into Castiel’s crotch (which exudes heat, because grace apparently burns even more profligately when angels are turned on) and in return gets his legs kicked farther apart. Cas insinuates his own hips more tightly between Dean’s and starts grinding into him methodically, while he alternates sucking Dean’s tongue with curling his tongue against the roof of Dean’s mouth. All of this makes Dean feel like he’s losing his mind. He instinctively wraps his legs around Cas, as if that’s where they belong, and the hand not holding him against the tree reaches down to support a thigh, pulling his legs up tighter and higher as Cas drives into him, thrusting against him in time with every kiss.

Dean takes Cas’s head between his hands so that he can angle the kiss more deeply, and is rewarded by having Cas break away to curse (this time in Latin), before taking over Dean’s mouth again. His tongue seems to belong in Dean’s mouth more than in his own.

This time Dean has to pull away, because he needs oxygen. “Cas,” he tries, “How long, when did, oh are you fucking _kidding_ me, _fuck yes_ —

Cas is sliding a hand underneath Dean’s shirt, scratching up one side of his chest with his fingernails, giving a hard pinch to the nipple. Dean’s vision cuts out for a second and he throws his head back until it hits the tree with a thump. Cas shoves the shirt up out of his way, fastens his mouth around the same nipple, and then reaches up to cradle Dean’s head considerately, so that when he closes his teeth and bites down, and Dean’s head slams backward again, this time it doesn’t make contact with treebark. Instead just Cas’s fingers winding into his hair, tugging hard, scratching against the scalp.

“When does it _start_ hurting?” he manages, pushing it now, knowing he can be bratty and needy, that it’s okay, that Cas won’t drop him.

“You won’t have to ask,” grits Cas, sliding down to bite Dean’s stomach, fingers unabashedly cupping his groin through the denim, using his teeth to yank down Dean's jeans another inch and worry a hipbone, all but growling, then licking a long stripe across his belly. Dean compresses his lips hard, trying not to flinch or yelp.

While being held down has been awesome, this little diversion makes up his mind for him: he unclamps his legs from around Cas's waist and suddenly slides down beneath the confining forearm, catching Cas off-guard and dragging them both to the ground together—and then they’re on their knees in the damp leaves, kissing desperately, all but wrestling. Dean has just achieved his first triumphant contact with Cas’s belt buckle and bare stomach when he’s on his back with Cas stretched over him, ripping apart Dean's clothing piece by piece and saying his name mindlessly over and over.

The trench coat winds up acting as a blanket, which is sensible because it’s October and the leaves have been rained on more than once and _oh holy shit what the fuck is he doing, how, how does he even_ know _how to_ —

Cas, who has continued licking across Dean’s stomach in long greedy stripes and sucking kisses all over his chest, now seems utterly fed up with the concept of jeans and unzips them enough to tear them in a single impatient movement all the way to Dean’s ankles. Dean doesn’t have time to feel cold because Cas immediately buries his face in Dean's stomach, nosing at the curls at the base of his dick, gripping both of his hipbones and gasping, and then there’s a long soft slow lick from root to head and Dean cries out for the first time, not a word just a sound, effectively reminding himself as to why they aren’t in the bunker—

He combs his fingers into Cas's soft brown hair again, wishes he had messy strands of it in his mouth. Instead he seizes one of Cas's hands and pulls it up to his face, bites the longest finger then draws it between his lips, sucks in a second one, licking them and rolling them against his soft palate, hoping to send a definite message. Cas’s other hand is now wrapped firmly around the base of Dean’s cock, which is good because otherwise this would all be over really quickly, and he isn’t sure in what order things need to happen for the Mark to be pulled out of him, although to be honest he keeps sort of forgetting about the Mark, especially now that Cas has retrieved the wettened fingers from Dean's mouth and is pressing them underneath his balls, right against his—

“Cas, wait. You have to—wait, okay, just. Just wait.”

Cas freezes and Dean draws a long shaky inhale. Unfortunately Cas has frozen with Dean’s dick buried in his mouth nearly all the way to the back of his throat. After a beat he slides off, slowly, and Dean’s eyes roll back in his head but somehow he doesn’t come. Cas looks up at him, a thin clear thread of saliva stretching down to Dean’s stomach. His expression is some improbable combination of concerned, lust-glazed, and annoyed.

Dean doesn’t remember Anna being anything like this in the sack, but then she had lived most of her life as a human, and Cas has mostly been a moonbeam of celestial whatever until really recently, so maybe his entire—

“Dean Winchester, for how long am I waiting.” Cas’s fingers dig into the tops of Dean’s thighs in a meaningful way. Dean sighs.

“Just—come up here, Cas. I need to see you. I need you.”

That he’s said this before, in a vastly less enjoyable context—he almost gets lost in it, almost falls into the flashback for a precarious instant, but then Cas is kissing him again and this time it’s better, because Dean manages to open all the dress-shirt buttons so now it’s skin against skin, their chests pressing and sliding, and Cas’s skin is burning hot but the air is freezing so that works out fine, and Cas takes Dean’s face between his hands and kisses the spit out of him until it’s all Dean can do not to whimper like a,—like himself, like he's whimpering.

Cas breaks away to pull both of them out of their shirt sleeves so their arms are finally free, making a complicated-sounding _sotto voce_ speech the entire time that Dean can’t understand a single word of, until he gets to the end and concludes with a low, triumphant, “ _…is saved,”_ and Dean understands that part, as well as the part where Castiel spits expertly and volubly into his right hand, takes both their dripping cocks in it together, and starts stroking slowly while licking back into Dean’s mouth.

“Still waiting for the terrible pain, Cas,” Dean moans.

“Shut up,” says Cas, and thrusts again and again against him, his fist perfectly tight and unbelievably slippery, until Dean can’t sustain language, until it’s all one undifferentiated sweep of sensation, liquid and wrenching and he needs to bury his teeth in something or he’s going to scream because he’s so close and the worst part is, he can tell how close Cas is, and there’s some kind of fucked-up feedback loop between the two of them, wherein the more wrecked and destroyed Cas sounds, and the more broken noises he makes, and the more he chokes out Dean’s name, the more Dean feels like he’s going to—

“Dean, _Dean please_ , please—“

“Oh fuck, come on, baby, come for me, fucking do it,” Dean breathes.

Cas's bent head rests on Dean's collarbone and he's shaking it back and forth in frustrated negation. “It’s, Dean, I'm—no—I can’t—“

“Yes, _yes_ , yes you fucking can—I’ve got you, I need you, fuck I’ve needed you so long, oh fuck, Cas, _fuck_ —”

Suddenly Cas’s entire body goes completely rigid and illuminates, Dean senses it glowing rather than sees it because he can’t see anything, Cas’s other hand is fisted in his hair pulling his head backward and he’s crying out and coming and Cas keeps saying his name and it’s all he ever wants to hear Cas say ever again and the entire universe is wet and slick and gorgeous and hot and perfect and nothing, nothing hurts.

Afterward there’s a very long drum break, with just a single tom beating over and over, one stroke at a time: boom, boom, boom, boom.

Eventually Dean becomes conscious of the fact that Cas’s head is pillowed on his stomach; that he’s running his fingers through Cas’s hair and in the process making it incredibly sticky; and that Cas is dipping a finger into the cooling liquid and tasting it experimentally. Dean thinks he should say something stupid and funny about this but he literally can’t think of any words. Cas looks up at him as if he’d spoken, though.

“Dean, it’s not finished.”

Dean tries to brace himself internally. Whatever is about to happen, the other thing has already happened, and he’s totally nerveless and spineless and opened, so that might make it easier. He’s more used to whiteknuckling through pain after half a fifth of double-malt, but this might be a better anesthetic for all he knows. He takes a deep breath, and nods.

He really doesn’t expect the next thing that happens, though, which is that Cas collects a surprising amount of their come in one adroit hand and then, all in one movement, shoulders Dean’s legs, tonguing at his balls and sliding most of a finger inside of him. Dean’s too shocked to make a sound, or to move.

Or no, it turns out he _can_ move, and he needs to move, because Cas has already somehow worked up to a second finger and is also lapping at the rim, sliding his tongue in between his fingers as he works Dean open. And Dean seems to need to slide down toward him, gasping and shaking, meeting his fingers as they reach up into him—

Whatever he might have thought about all this earlier today, or yesterday, or a month ago, or a year ago, or if he even ever _had_ thought about it (he’s totally thought about it), the truth turns out to be both more complicated and simpler than he thought.

The complicated part is that there’s a genuinely kind of gross sensation of _pressure_ that he’s only ever associated with one thing before; and this is confusing.

The simpler aspect is that, as Cas hollows his mouth around the head of Dean’s cock while slamming into him with three fingers, swallowing and sucking somehow at the same time,—the simpler part is that somehow even at his age Dean starts getting hard again and, unexpectedly, shoves back against Cas, rushing to take in his hand, not content to wait for that occasional magical star-sparking accident happening inside him but starting to need it, to seek it out, to want—

“Alright already, you’ve made your point,” he pants, digging his heels into Castiel’s kidneys and trying to tug him up by the armpits. “Body fluids, demon cure, I don’t care anymore, you know that, right, I don’t give a flying—, just, would you, goddammit it, could you just—” He continues hauling at the task-focused angel, not wanting to have to ask. _Please,_ he thinks wildly, _please don’t make me say_ please.

Cas undulates back up along his body to eye level, somehow touching every inch of skin along the way ( _what the hell, since when are holy tax accountants also exotic dancers, what_ else _do I not know_ , what jewels has he been sitting on over there) (Dean is increasingly certain that he doesn’t know anything, which makes him inordinately cheerful). When Cas reaches his face, he cups Dean’s chin in one hand, sliding the other down and stroking gently but suggestively. He kisses him like they're both about to die, one part ravishment, one part angry tenderness, then raises up on both knees and one hand, still jacking Dean slowly, looking down at him. Dean couldn’t be spread open much more invitingly without looking like a breakfast buffet.

“This is the part that could involve pain,” Cas states, his attempt at dispassionate diction sort of ruined by the fact that his voice cracks and his eyelids flutter shut when Dean twists his nipple and then uses what’s left of the puddle between them to slick up Cas’s cock and start circling it deliberately between his thighs.

“I can’t tell you how much I do not fucking care about pain right now,” Dean answers, more than a little pleased by Cas’s response, which is to curse, this time in American like an actual human (oh _fuck, Dean you have no idea what your hands do to me, fuck, yes, that, I, I—oh_ god), and then fasten his mouth to Dean’s, as he reaches down to start gentling his cockhead inside him.

After about five seconds of all this thoughtful caution Dean’s had enough, and using the last of his strength, flips Cas onto his back, straddling him. “Jesus Christ, I’m not a _girl_ ,” he snarls down at the blinking angel, fastening his teeth in his lower lip and sliding downward impetuously.

There is, yes, some immediate level of regret, and perhaps a private resolve not to make fun of girls in bed ever again.

But Cas’s hands fly up to grab his hips; and the way he arches his back and makes garbled sounds leads Dean to the conclusion that it was worth it. And with every movement they make, the complicated feeling resolves increasingly into the simpler one, which has some kind of insanely electric arcing aspect to it, and he experiments with changing the angle, ignoring Cas's pleas for _more_ and _harder_ , until finally an increasingly desperate Cas raises his thighs, grabbing each of Dean’s legs by the ankle and holding them firmly at his shoulders, and takes over.

That—yes. Who would have thought. But definitely. _That._

Cas releases an ankle (Dean simply hooks it under Cas’s arm) so he can lick his hand, reach down and go back to jerking Dean off, long even strokes with that sinister crooked wrist movement at the top of the slide that’s just, he’s not, this is too—he’s—

“Oh Dean, fuck, _Dean_ ,” Cas moans, and that’s all it takes, Dean feels himself clenching around Cas and spurting across his chest, holding his breath and trying not to sob or make premature declarations— _but I know he knows, he_ has _to know, and he knows I know, he gave up an entire army_ —and then is mostly trying to hang on as suddenly Cas flips them again, and in a flash goes from devastatingly sexual to scowling badass-of-the-Lord in mid-thrust, glaring down at Dean all darkened eyes and seraphic wrath.

“ _Now,_ ” Cas says through clenched teeth, and slams his hand down on Dean’s forearm, and seals his mouth against Dean’s, as he braces his legs and just fucking _rails_ into him, and Dean had thought he was finished but he seems to still be coming, and then—

 _everything is white-hot and searing, am I screaming, I might be screaming, is this what it's like when they smite you, was it a trap, is it really Cas,_ he knows he is struggling to get away but Cas holds him down, implacable in orgasm, as grace or whatever the fuck angelic body fluid it is enters and races inside him, _down and along and through nerves and capillaries and muscle fibers, and it’s being cut off, they’re cutting off my arm or, no, Cas wouldn’t let them, maybe I’m cutting it off myself, or it’s burning, it’s caught on fire,_ and his spine arches and his eyes open but he doesn’t see Cas, doesn’t see the night sky or the trees, he only sees _her_ , her on the ceiling the way he didn’t see her that night but he hears her, hears her fear, hears the fire, smells the blood and the burning meat and fat and hair and this is what he is trying in his twisted black-eyed way to tell Sammy, _that was the moment when existence sucked the life out of my life_ , that after that nothing has been the same again, has never been whole, everything after that has never been okay, and he has gotten used to never getting used to it but it still hurts, worst of all when he’s half-asleep or not adequately drunk or Sam stalks off or he’s shouting into empty air after Cas, come back, come back dammit, and there isn’t even anyone to grab onto, there isn’t even a sleeve or an arm or a hand or a body, her hair, her beautiful face, he can’t see her, he can’t see Cas, just the forlorn flapping sound of his wings as he leaves, as they leave, Sam gets in the car and leaves, and he goes to bed that night and he never sees her again, just smells the smoke and the injury and the wrongness and Sam’s hot tears soaking his shirt, dripping off his collarbone—

_Love. Love. Love. Love. Love._

Cas has drawn Dean up into his lap again, encircled him in his arms once more, and is rocking back and forth, crooning this one word over and over like it's the only word he knows, or like he made it up himself. It seems to be light, Dean can’t tell where the light is coming from, maybe from Cas. Cas’s chest is wet, and so is Dean’s face, he’s pressing his face against the smooth skin of Cas's chest and it's him who has made the chest be wet, and he has lost his voice, from crying or screaming or whatever, and he can only breathe, raggedly, hoarsely, in and out, in and out, for a long long time, as Cas rocks him and says his word, his one word, again and again.

Dean thinks someday, when and if he ever gives a crap about anything ever again, he might feel ashamed about this.

On the other hand he now has only one arm, so maybe no one will hold it against him.

“Dean,” Cas says, his voice still rough but oddly high-pitched, “Look. Look at your arm.”

 _I don’t have one now,_ Dean wants to say, but he looks, because it’s Cas.

His arm is fine. There’s no mark of any kind. It looks a little reddened, but that could also be because Cas is murmuring into the skin and covering it with kisses.

“Oh jesus god,” he tries to say, but nothing comes out.

It’s light, he now sees, because it’s light. The sun hasn’t come up but it’s bright in the east behind the bunker.

And here they are, Cas and him, completely naked and entangled. Dean doesn’t know what to think about this but he doesn’t have to know because they’re kissing and Cas is laughing into the curve of his neck, giddy because it worked, it worked—

Wait.

“Wait,” he tries again, and this time his throat makes a sound. “Grace.” He tips Cas’s face up with one hand and tries to see a difference.

It’s immediately visible, even to Dean, so probably it’s like a fucking klaxon to other species. Cas’s skin is pale, again, and he’s more disheveled than he should look, not in a glowing fucked-out way but like someone who needs to be driven to urgent care.

Even worse, Dean realizes, scrambling up and fumbling for his jeans, ignoring the distinctly unpleasant dripping sensations—even though he’s smiling with teeth Cas has started shivering. And the bags under his eyes have bags, and—and he’s cold. Dean touches his skin. It’s _cold_. Cas keeps smiling up at Dean, his lips a faint violet color.

“I’m not a space heater anymore,” he says, coughing apologetically.

“Shit,” breathes Dean, and starts dressing both of them as fast as he can. The slight warmth of the dawn is helping, as the first rays come over the hills on the other side of the highway, and the fog and dew start burning off. He’d probably be able to dress Cas more quickly if he’d stop pressing kisses to various body parts before he stuffs them into dress pants and dress shirt and—

—and trench coat. Dean stops in mid-movement.

“That’s your plan, Cas? _That’s_ been your _plan_? All along?”

Cas doesn’t bother to deny it or pretend he doesn’t know what Dean’s talking about. Brusquely shoving Cas’s arms into his coat sleeves, like he’s dressing a little kid who doesn’t want to go to school, Dean buttons it up for him, gives him the dirtiest look he’s capable of summoning while still half-naked, and reaches into the pocket.

And pulls out what’s been there all along, presumably for years.

They look at it together, glowing dull bronze in the sunrise. It doesn’t look like anything that could even so much as find lost socks or missing car keys, much less God. Dean feels oddly glad to see it again, though, because it reminds him of Sam. Of a time when Sammy still looked up to him, a time before Dean had chased his own brother around the bunker with a fucking claw hammer.

Cas reaches out for it, trying not to cough, shaking with the effort. Dean lets the amulet drop into Cas’s palm, watches him close his fingers around it almost reverently and return it to the coat pocket.

“Dean, it’s all I have. It was all I had of you—I couldn’t let either of us throw it away.”

“It's fine, Cas, I’m not mad.” Dean yanks his t-shirt on over his head, tries to button on the flannel one but then gives up when he sees how many are missing. “But it’s not all you have, okay, don't say that—you have _me_. You’ve always had me. We could have thought of something else. We still can—”

“Every time, Dean. Every time I’ve died, He’s brought me back. I don’t have faith, I can’t. I’ve seen all the things you’ve seen. But I come back, every time. I don’t know why, but He doesn’t want me to die. Not yet, maybe not when I can still be useful to you and Sam. And especially, surely not now. Now that I’ve, it wouldn’t be fair, we only just—”

Dean has one boot on and the other in his hand, and he’s torn between wanting to throw it at Castiel’s head or maybe take off all his clothes again because he still hasn’t even had a chance to suck him off and that’s not fair, he can’t leave, oh god he’s going to take off—

Dean scrambles forward to seize Cas’s arm, galvanized by the fear that he won’t be there in two seconds. “I’m not letting go, Cas—until you promise me you won’t flap on out of here, I’m not fucking letting go.”

Cas shakes his head. “I can’t fly anymore.”

Dean finds his voice coming back the more incensed with fear and anger he gets. “Oh that’s just _great_ , Cas. So you’re going to find _God_ , how, on Greyhound? driving around in that piece-of-crap Continental, with, what, how many weeks do you have left? Or is it days? Any hot tips where God’s crib is this year? You did such a _bang-up_ job of finding Him last time, and you weren’t even limited to our quadrant of the galaxy. This time you’ll be lucky if you make it out of frigging _Kansas._ ”

Cas blinks, which would be the extent of his usual response to sarcasm; but nothing will ever be usual again, because then he presses a kiss to the corner of Dean’s mouth, which is still twitching with rage.

And weirdly, Dean feels calmer. And his head feels clearer. And he's not freezing or whiting out. He finishes dressing and they start walking back toward the bunker, tattered and dirty. Dean brushes bits of bracken out of Cas’s hair and then, in a reversal of last night’s roles, winds an arm around his shoulders and takes his weight, pulls him into his side and steadies him as they walk.

The trench coat is filthy, and Dean finds himself upset because Cas can’t mojo it clean and he probably won’t let him take it to the cleaners before he starts to pursue his terrible horrible no-good very bad idea.

Anyway there's no way Dean's going to let him carry out his shitty plan alone.

“Cas, look. If you can’t fly you shouldn't be driving either. So, you know. I’ll drive." He clears his throat. "Or buy airplane tickets or whatever. I have no idea what you’re even thinking, man, but we're going together. I’m not sitting here on my ass while you tool around looking for a deity in a haystack.”

Cas acknowledges this with a small nod. “There’s something I haven’t had a chance to tell you. It’s—I do know—I _think_ I know where He is. Or might be. Well, where He last was, anyway.”

Cas drops abruptly to the edge of the concrete steps leading to the bunker, while Dean leans against the metal railing, looking down at him and wondering what to do. He figures Sam probably slept through his morning run, thanks to being roofied by Cas’s spell, so they probably have a half-hour or so to get inside and cleaned up before the inevitable eyerolling and shit-eating and Talking about Feelings begin.

“It was one of the times I exploded—the first time, actually—”

They look at each other, and Dean can’t help it, he starts laughing: _You realize how screwed up our lives are, that that even makes sense?_

By the time he finally gets his breath back, he’s bent over wiping his eyes. It’s awesome, even better than the time they got kicked out of the whorehouse. Cas is trembling, but smiling.

“Come on, you’re freezing.” Dean stands, and more or less picks Cas up by the collar, then holds him against his chest for a moment. It’s not really a hug, it’s more like— _like he’s mine and I’m not losing him again,_ he tells himself, finally drawing a strand of Cas’s mussed dark brown hair into his mouth under the pretense of kissing the top of his head (he guessed right: it tastes bitter and a little soapy, even though the color is melted chocolate). Cas is a little too tall for this maneuver, but it works out nicely with Dean standing on the concrete step above him, so he can tuck Cas’s head into the crook between his neck and chest, which is exactly, Dean thinks, where he belongs, where he would fit naturally if they were—

“Lying down,” he says aloud. “What the fuck, you're exhausted. You can sleep now, right?”

Cas agrees. His nose is running a little, and it makes Dean’s stomach clench.

“Okay then. Plan for today: we sleep. We'll go in through the garage, in case Sam’s awake, because there’s no way we’re going to explain all this now, unless we lie and say you got pissed off and beat the shit out of me again.” He gestures up and down to indicate their overall disastrous appearance, not to mention the fact that Dean thinks there may be marks bitten on his throat (he doesn’t know if Cas’s grace resolved those and isn’t about to ask) (but thinking about Cas leaving them there makes blood pulse warmly in his groin). “And then we sleep, and then—then we’ll wake up and we’ll. We’ll.”

Dean doesn’t know how to finish that sentence.

Maybe it doesn’t matter. _You really think we three will be enough? —We always have been_.

Cas holds out a hand, dignified, like they’re maybe going to shake on it or something, with his lopsided sad smile. “We’ll kick it in the ass?”

Dean thinks he understands the one-sided smile, finally. It's Cas trying to be okay with being alone when he thinks he has to be alone. It makes his chest hurt and he privately resolves to extinguish it from existence.

So Dean takes the hand, but brings to his lips and deliberately kisses the soft inside of Cas’s wrist.

“That’s exactly what we do, angel. We kick it in the fucking ass."

 _Because in this godforsaken family,_ he thinks fiercely, blinking back the sting in his eyes, _no one gets left behind._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU DEAR PERSONS, you are the most bestest of readers. I am sorry I do not know better how to commit acts of fanfiction. But I had fun with this, my first attempt to write actual fiction as well as attempt to repair the damages that s10 hath already wrought (even though we know all our codas will be Jossed/Kripked probably before October is out). Also! I have now lost my smut-writing virginity! It was terrifying, and I officially suck at pr0n.
> 
> This was unbetaed but big ups to [bettydays](http://bettydays.tumblr.com) for helping me immeasurably, not least when it comes to understanding why adverbs have no place in fanfic and how many times you get to use the adjectives "deft," "wrecked, " "keen" and "debauched" (no more than five per fic).
> 
> Come see me on [tumblr](http://bert-and-ernie-are-gay.tumblr.com) or [twitter](http://twitter.com/jsalowe) if you want! I love the love. xoxo


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